The present invention is a modification of the poultry breast splitting device of my U.S. Pat. No. 4,270,243 and is utilized for the same general purpose of dismembering poultry carcasses and separating them into component parts which can be separately packaged for the market. Although the device of this invention splits the breast of a poultry carcass into halves, as does the above identified patent, it is utilized to dissect the entire upper body portion of a poultry carcass comprising the wings and the breast affixed to the backbone. The safety features of the above identified patent are retained and others are incorporated.
Machines of various designs have been utilized in the past to dismember poultry carcasses for removal of the various components for separate packaging, some devices performing single operations, as in my above identified patent, and other devices dismember the entire carcass by removing the individual components one by one, of which U.S. Pat. No. 4,016,624 is an example. The manner of severing and dismembering the carcasses and the actual severing tools utilized varies widely among the prior art patents, of which a number are listed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,016,624 and 4,270,243. However, many of the previous poultry carcass dismembering devices are complex devices requiring extensive maintenance and adjustment. The apparatus of the present invention is an adaptation of my prior invention and provides a reliable and efficient device for use in a rapid and automated process for dismembering poultry carcasses into their component parts with full protection to the machine operator.